Don't tell me who I am

For the first part of the interview, click here


Q: In your book "Dear Zealot," you criticize our discourse, describing us as "obsessed with the question of where the borders will lie and which flag will wave over the holy sites." Then you conclude that "the holy sites should be holy to those who view them as such regardless of any flag. It is not the flag that gives them their holiness." This reminds me of the criticism you once leveled at Naomi Shemer, when you asked her why she wrote [in the song "Jerusalem of Gold"], "The market square is empty," when it was in fact filled with Arabs. I will quote her answer. "Would you care if your wife was with someone else? She's not alone, is she-" So yes, we want it to be under our sovereignty. We want to wave our flag. That is also the reason we returned.

"In my other writings you will find one thing that I explicitly tell Naomi Shemer: Excuse me, but we are not alone in this land. That is why the market square was not empty until 1967. Wife or no wife, it wasn't empty. Even if my wife is married to another man, that other man exists, he doesn't not exist. That was my argument."

Q: There you go talking about love in rational terms.

"When I write a political article, I ask myself what to do. In my argument with Mordechai Shalev, in the book -- his eyes filled with tears when Nili sang 'When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like those who dream' [Psalms 126]. Do you think that I don't know why he became teary eyed? Do you think that I am not from there? But I answered him that if you want to replace the Zionist anthem with something then it should be, 'No miracle befell us -- No cruse of oil found by us' [a quote from the song 'We are carrying torches' by Avraham Zev]. Ideologically speaking, that is where I stand. But emotionally, I could find myself neck deep in Mordechai Shalev's side."

Q: But that was not enough for you. You claim in your book that the fact that people insert God into the Zionist narrative actually hurts you, threatens to erase your identity. How does a religious interpretation of history threaten to efface you?

"I'll tell you what threatens to efface me. Not the fact that other people interpret things differently, but rather that some disciples of Rabbi Kook are trying to tell me: 'You're not who you think you are. We'll tell you who you are.'"

Q: Friedrich Hegel says the same thing.

"In my opinion, Hegel is a monster, so don't use him to hang me. One of the things that sadden me is Hegel's profound influence on Rabbi Kook, the cunning of history."

Q: I'm not sure he absorbed that from Hegel, but rather from Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Giambattista Vico and Nachman Krochmal. But to the point: Didn't Freud say that all human behavior is influenced more by the subconscious part of our psyche-

"Sure. But that doesn't mean that I don't have a right to say that I thought about it, considered it and this is where I stand. To say that I understand why you are here better than you do is an insult."

Q: In Pirkei Avot, our sages said, "All is foreseen, and freedom of choice is granted." It didn't start with Hegel. It is a fundamental religious principle that man has complete free will, but God still knows exactly what will happen to him. That's the great paradox that feeds the study of religion.

"I knew we would get to the paradox. That is the question about God. It is the question."

Q: But even before that. Rabbi Kook didn't revoke the individual's free will to rebel. Neither did Hegel or Freud. We are talking about a large public, in which individuals have the free will to do as they please, but they still have a historical spirit guiding them. There were individuals within the nation who supported or opposed the return to Zion, but still a great spirit swept the people back to history and back to Zion.

"You wouldn't want me to tell you that while you may believe what you just said, I understand better than you what you really want."

Q: Speaking of presumption: You outlined a socio-political hierarchy to define who the most "Jewish Jews" are. At the top are the ultra-Orthodox, followed by "radical settlers," then traditional Jews, then "just regular people ... captured infants," and at the bottom of the pyramid -- the least Jewish Jews -- are "these leftists." I want to argue that your friends see the same pyramid, only inverted. They view themselves as being at the top, and everyone else as savages ("Neanderthals"). I don't give such pyramids too much credence. To me, they are a part of human nature, not a philosophical approach.

"This little book says right on the very first page that I do not presume to have the last word. I don't want that, anyway. All I'm asking is to listen, not to agree. Why now? Because now, more than ever, my views are being distorted. That is where my anger comes from too."

Q: What bothers you most about your views being distorted-

"Simply put: who loves Israel more, those who want it to be big or those who want to share it with the Palestinians. This thing about who loves Israel more is terribly insulting. Is there only one way to love Israel? If you and I love the same woman, and you love her completely naked and I love her fully dressed from head to toe, does one of us love her less? What is that-

"The worst insult that I get -- and I don't want to speak for any of my friends -- there are two: One is when I am told that 'you're not who you say you are, we'll tell you who you are'; or when I'm told 'what's important is not what you think, but what's behind what you think, and we'll tell you what that is.' They say, 'What you say is not because you believe it but rather because you want to win awards abroad, or you want to be applauded, or because you are part of the elite.' From a 29-meter [300 square foot] cellar, from a revisionist family and a father who received threats, I'm part of the elite. I don't even understand what that word means.

"The other insult is when people tell me, 'You love less' -- be it Judaism, the people of Israel, the state. These are very hurtful insults. Even in the worst times when [David] Ben-Gurion hurled insults at [Menachem] Begin, no one ever said, 'You don't love Israel.' He never said that they forgot how to be Jews."

Q: Yes, they just didn't let them teach at universities or enter other power centers.

"It's too bad, you're preaching to the choir on this. I come from the same place you do on this issue."

Q: But what you are describing resembles the insult that my friends feel. To them, it didn't happen during the Ben-Gurion era, it happened two years ago. After the last election, your friends said that the masses don't know who they voted for and that they are all brainwashed. And still, despite the criticism, my assertion is that it is human nature.

"I'm not saying that one side is pure and good and the other side is despicable. In the worst times of disagreement between the Left and the Right, when the Right was alienated and isolated and reviled, no one said about them that they forgot how to be Jews. No one claimed that they didn't love the homeland."

Q: Other things were said about them that were no less hurtful. But let me tell you something about 'you forgot how to be Jews.' It is important to me to deconstruct this argument once and for all. You are referring to that famous whisper that Benjamin Netanyahu whispered in the late Rabbi [Yitzhak] Kaduri's ear in October, 1997. The Left hasn't stopped milking that remark, which was only partially quoted and worse than a lie. In the original recording, Netanyahu said, "The Left forgot what it is to be Jews; they think that they can trust the Arabs to ensure our security. The Arabs will take care of us -- give them part of the land and they will take care of us."

He was not sharing a secret with Rabbi Kaduri about the "spoiled" Jewish identity of the Israeli Left. They forgot what it was to be Jews when they were in exile! As indicated by the fact that they trusted Arafat and his gang to protect us. That is an entirely different meaning.

"Is it difficult for you to admit that it was an unfortunate remark? The disagreement between a Paratroopers brigade commander from Breaking the Silence and a Paratroopers brigade commander from a settlement is that one wants us to live like we did in exile without security and the other forgot what it's like to be a Jew? Is that the argument-"

Q: No. Rabin said right after the Oslo Accord was signed, "The Palestinian police will fight Hamas without B'Tselem, without the High Court of Justice and without Mothers Against Silence." We have been reaping the fruits of that nonsense until now, and Netanyahu has every right to criticize that. He didn't mean Jews in terms of identity or theology. His remarks were cut off for obvious reasons, to fan the flames. It is important to have the facts.

"How would it have sounded to you if Ben-Gurion had said about the Right that 'they forgot how to be Jews, they only believe in force'-"

Q: That's a legitimate statement. It doesn't mean that I'm not Jewish. It only means that we, as part of the people, have forgotten.

"OK, I hope it is just a misunderstanding. I'm not sure."

Why didn't Abraham negotiate-

Q: Let's talk about the reasons for the destruction of the Temple. You write in your book: "Ever since we were children, we were told that previous states of Israel collapsed because of internal strife. Over needless hatred. The truth is that the revolt against the Romans, which resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple, just as the war against the Babylonians that brought about the destruction of the First Temple, did not fail because of brotherly strife or because of needless hatred between Jews, but rather they failed because of national and religious fanaticism. It was the fault of leaders with delusions of grandeur and those who were led had lost all sense of reality. Even if all the Jews during the First Temple era had loved one another, and even if they were united like compressed concrete or steel, even then, Babylon and Rome would have easily crushed this brazen little nation that had chosen to bang its head against the wall."

We have different readings of history. The Kingdom of Israel collapsed because of fanatics who needlessly hated anyone who disagreed with them. Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin wrote in the introduction of his commentary on the Book of Genesis about the Second Temple era fanatics: "Therefore, because of the unwarranted hatred each had for the other, one would falsely accuse another of heresy, simply because the other's religious expression, and way of respecting and showing reverence to God was not in accordance with one's own way. This lack of tolerance and limited acceptance of individual religious expression eventually led to murder in the first degree and to all the evils in the world."

Of course the destruction was over needless hatred. Not because they banged their heads against the wall to combat superpowers. History has proven that when we were united, we could defeat any superpower.

Moreover, you write elsewhere in your book "The people of Israel don't like to be docile. They never have. Moses will attest to that, as will the prophets. God is always complaining that the people are disobedient. Abraham questions God's verdict on Sodom." That is all true. There has never been a consensus among the people of Israel. You can see it on the pages of the Talmud that include endless arguments. You call it anarchism, and all I see is as an iconoclastic tradition of doing away with conventional wisdom, starting with Abraham. My conclusion is that revolt is second nature to us, we cannot accept foreign rule, and that is why our forefathers revolted. Not because they were fanatics, but because they desired freedom.

That's where you have a problem: If our forefathers were anarchists, and Abraham chastises God asking, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly-" (Genesis 18:25), what about the binding of Isaac? Suddenly we find that Abraham is a fundamentalist fanatic. "Blind obedience," as you call it.

So I ask you as a man of literature and as an artist -- isn't that is the message of the entire Bible? Why are they anarchists who rebel and recoil from sickly sweet consensus? Because their only ruler is God. The kings of Israel were never absolute rulers, only civilian leaders. That is the message Abraham communicates when he binds his son. Everything flows to God and everything comes from God. When Shulamit Har Even says that Abraham should have refused his orders, she makes the story superficial. It is like talking about love in rational terms.

"First of all, if Kamsa had adopted Bar Kamsa as his son, beyond loving him, they still wouldn't have defeated Rome. Why did the Hasmoneans succeed where Bar Kochba and Zedekia failed? Because alongside the profound desire to be free in our land, they also had a sense of timing, knowing when to fight and when not to fight. They restrained themselves and held back for many years while the Romans desecrated the holiness and persecuted the observers of Jewish law. They had a sense of timing, and they had a political sense. That was also Ben-Gurion's greatest quality, which spelled the terrible fate of his predecessors and his successors. I want to present this as a question.

"And another question: When was Abraham closer to the heart of Judaism, when he negotiated over the fate of sinning strangers in Sodom -- though he lost that argument, but still he negotiated -- or when he blindly followed orders, saying, 'Yes sir' and slaughtered his son? I say slaughtered because the fact that Isaac survived had nothing to do with Abraham. It wasn't Abraham who saved him."

Q: I'll answer with a question: Do you see Abraham arguing about Sodom without having sacrificed his son to God?

"Sure."

Q: In other words, you are sterilizing the Bible of its very core.

"No. I don't expect Abraham to refuse orders. I expect him to negotiate."

Q: Our sages already debated this issue, when they said, "You should have argued with him!" But in the context of the Biblical text, Abraham, whom you respect, who argued with God about Sodom and achieved other impressive feats, this great man does not argue with God about Isaac, and you strip him of his free will, rejecting the notion that he did it because he actively believed it was the best course of action, not blind obedience. You are saying to him: 'I know better than you what you should have done,' which is essentially your own complaint against the disciples of Rabbi Kook who claim to know better than you why you are here. But Abraham chose differently, and said that it was on this -- among other things -- that he founded our nation. That is his message.

"I think of myself as having a decent imagination. You could even call it my livelihood. And yet, I can't imagine a situation where I am told this regarding my only son -- I have daughters but only one son -- and I agree."

Q: Neither can I. That is why you are not Abraham.

"I am not. Let's end on a question, at least on my end. I am not trying to rule on Jewish law. I want to ask: When was Abraham a better Jew? I ask: Why did the Hasmoneans succeed? And I ask: Is there only one way to love Israel, only one way to be a Jew, or even only one way to view the security of the state-"

טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו